... My horse, my books, and my friends will
divide my time pretty equally.'
He still interested himself in what was useful; and carried a Bill in
the House of Lords for the Reformation of the Calendar, in 1751. It
seems a small matter for so great a mind as his to accomplish, but it
was an achievement of infinite difficulty. Many statesmen had shrunk
from the undertaking; and even Chesterfield found it essential to
prepare the public, by writing in some periodical papers on the subject.
Nevertheless the vulgar outcry was vehement: 'Give us back the eleven
days we have been robbed of!' cried the mob at a general election. When
Bradley was dying, the common people ascribed his sufferings to a
judgment for the part he had taken in that 'impious transaction,' the
alteration of the calendar. But they were not less _bornes_ in their
notions than the Duke of Newcastle, then prime minister. Upon Lord
Chesterfield giving him notice of his Bill, that bustling premier, who
had been in a hurry for forty years, who never 'walked but always ran,'
greatly alarmed, begged Chesterfield not to stir matters that had been
long quiet; adding, that he did not like 'new-fangled things.
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